David Ward-Steinman, a native of Alexandria, Louisiana, was an Adjunct Professor of Music at Indiana University-Bloomington and Distinguished Professor Emeritus (and former Composer-in-Residence) at San Diego State University where he directed the Comprehensive Musicianship Program, New Music Ensembles, and taught composition. He received many national and state awards for his compositions and teaching, including the Bearns Prize from Columbia University; four BMI-SCA awards; first prizes in the Phi Mu Alpha, SAI, and National Federation of Music Clubs composition contests; the Dohnanyi Citation and Outstanding Alumnus of the Year awards from Florida State University; the Outstanding Professor Award from the Trustees of the Calif. State Universities and Colleges; and was a White House reception honoree in 1966. In 1970-72 he was the Ford Foundation composer-in-residence for the Tampa Bay area of Florida, in 1986 composer-in-residence at the Brevard Music Center in North Carolina, and in 1986-87 he was appointed University Research Lecturer at San Diego State University.
Commissions include those from the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Joffrey Ballet, San Diego Ballet, California Ballet, MTNA, National Association of College Wind & Percussion Instructors, American Harp Society (San Diego chapter), and the San Diego Symphony, which commissioned works for both the 2000-2001 and 2001-2002 seasons that were premiered under the baton of Jung-Ho Pak. Other orchestral works have been performed by the Japan Philharmonic, New Orleans Philharmonic, San Diego Symphony, San Diego Chamber Orchestra, Orchestra USA, Seattle Symphony, City of London Sinfonia, Moravian Philharmonic Orchestra, Brevard Festival Orchestra, The Philadelphia Virtuosi Chamber Orchestra, etc. Gregory Peck and Vincent Price have appeared as Narrator in different performances of Ward-Steinman's oratorio The Song of Moses.
Ward-Steinman was a featured guest composer and lecturer at over 75 campuses here and abroad, with performances in all the major cities of the USA and over a dozen countries abroad, in every continent except Africa. He is the author of "Toward a Comparative Structural Theory of the Arts" and over fifty published compositions, and co-author of the two-volume "Comparative Anthology of Musical Forms."
Ward-Steinman held degrees from Florida State University (BM cum laude), the University of Illinois (MM and DMA), and was awarded the Kinley Memorial Fellowship from UI for foreign study. He has also been a post-doctoral Fellow at Princeton, a Fulbright Senior Scholar to Australia and New Zealand, and a composer at IRCAM in Paris. His teachers included his mother Daisy Ward-Steinman, John Boda (FSU), Burill Phillips (UI), Darius Milhaud (Aspen), Milton Babbitt and Aaron Copland (Tanglewood), Nadia Boulanger (Paris), and Edward Kilenyi (Piano, FSU).
